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Friday, August 20, 2010

The Next Chapter, The Next Borough

I really feel like I waited until the last possible minute to commit to the next place in which I was going to reside in New York City, and it turns out, it was the first place I saw.

Thank God my poor future roommate held onto his spare room for all these weeks while I met a number of other unsuitable roommates like the clean freak, the stand-up comic, the drum instructor, and the one that smelled like cat pee.

But I had to explore my options. I had to give myself the chance to share a room in a luxury high rise in Long Island City or on Wall Street - to finally have a doorman, laundry, and a dishwasher, my God, a dishwasher! Unfortunately, these places were not meant to be.

How is it that the first place I ever lived in New York City was actually the best? On May 19, 1997, I drove a truck through a torrential downpour and thunderstorm down from Syracuse to Paramus, NJ, where my friend Tim and I stopped for McDonald's and I had a nervous breakdown, asking Tim to take over driving through the Lincoln Tunnel and the streets of Manhattan. We pulled up to Third Avenue and E. 11th Street and dumped my belongings in those huge gray rubber rolling bins and moved everything into NYU's Third North tower as quickly as possible.

I had a doorman back then.

I had free utilities back then.

I had a courtyard where I sipped wine and wrote by candlelight, and made eyes at the cute college guys passing through.

(Let's just forget that I had to share a suite with five other girls and our shower room constantly flooded.)

But when it came down to it, when choosing my next apartment, there were three things I was really looking for: 1) that it be temporary, 2) that it be clean, and 3) that it be safe.

My future roommate was willing to give me his spare room on a month-to-month basis, and living with a guy gives me a certain feeling of security. The apartment, though small, looked great when I saw it, recently painted with new cabinets, which is more than I can say for the apartment I'm leaving behind. We'll see what crawls into bed with me once I'm moved in.

My inner spirit of adventure knows that I should embrace living in Queens, a borough I've only visited (though sometimes overnight) and haven't lived in. I'll be near friends. There will be new bars and restaurants to discover, and the local Greek cuisine.

I don't know how long I'll be there, but I hope to make the most (and the best) of it while I can.